Intrigue Over Spy’s Death Spreads To Germany

MOSCOW, Dec. 10 —The German authorities announced Sunday that they had begun a criminal investigation of a Russian businessman after finding traces of polonium 210 around Hamburg that date back to Oct. 28 — four days before he met in London with the former Russian spy who died after ingesting the radioactive substance.

Dmitri V. Kovtun

The British police have so far found no evidence of polonium contamination in London earlier than the date of that meeting, Nov. 1. The Sunday announcement raised the possibility that the polonium was carried from Moscow to London by way of Germany.

It has also added to suspicions that the case is somehow connected to the shadowy world of agents and businessmen, defectors, spies and exiles let loose by the dissolution of the K.G.B., and still entwined with successor agencies.

The former Russian spy, Alexander V. Litvinenko, long a critic of Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, made deathbed accusations that Mr. Putin was complicit in the poisoning — an accusation the Kremlin has derisively dismissed. The case has strained relations between Russia and Britain, and has now entangled Germany.

The man the Germans have put at the center of scrutiny is Dmitri V. Kovtun, a 41-year-old Russian who was a student in the 1980s at the Supreme Soviet Higher Military Command School, where many students went on to serve in the K.G.B. He has been in a Moscow hospital since Dec. 7, suffering from exposure to polonium. There are conflicting reports about his health; Interfax, the Russian news agency, reported he was in critical condition, but his lawyer later disputed that.

At a news conference in Hamburg on Sunday, the citys chief prosecutor, Martin Köhnke, told reporters, He may not just be a victim but could also be a perpetrator. He said that Mr. Kovtun was suspected of illegally handling the polonium.

A spokeswoman for the German police, Ulrike Sweden, expressed frustration that Russian authorities had not responded to German requests to speak to Mr. Kovtun.

The German authorities said that Mr. Kovtun, who has been living in Germany, began spreading traces of polonium 210 in Hamburg soon after he arrived on an Aeroflot jet from Moscow on Oct. 28. Traces were found in the BMW that picked him up at the airport; on a couch and a pillow in at the apartment of his former wife, where he spent the night; at the house of his former wifes mother; and on a document he signed in a meeting at the immigration office in Hamburg two days later, the police said.

If youre sitting in the passenger seat of a car, youre not likely to be sweating enough to leave traces of it that way, Ms. Sweden said by telephone on Sunday. Its possible he got poisoned by handling the stuff.

On Nov. 1, Mr. Kovtun flew to London. An inspection of the plane he flew on, which belonged to the airline Germanwings, turned up no evidence of contamination.

In London, Mr. Kovtun met with two former K.G.B. agents, Andrei K. Lugovoi and Vyacheslav G. Sokolenko, whom he had known as students at the Soviet military school in the 1980s and who had both gone into private security work after the K.G.B. dissolved along with the Soviet Union.

Then he and Mr. Lugovoi, who had known Mr. Litvinenko for 10 years, met with him at a bar in the Millennium Mayfair Hotel, ostensibly to pursue a business deal. Alex Goldfarb, a friend of the Litvinenko family, said that Mr. Sokolenko also met Mr. Litvinenko on Nov. 1, possibly at the same hotel.

Within hours, Mr. Litvinenko became seriously ill. Three weeks later, he was dead, and medical experts determined that the cause was exposure to polonium 210. The association of so many men linked to the former K.G.B. in the case reflects the shadowy tangle of relations that emerged from Russias post-Soviet chaos, where some covert agents became free agents but kept ties to the government, billions were made overnight, and the new billionaires who made them needed protection.

Mr. Litvinenko and Mr. Lugovoi, in particular, held close ties to Boris A. Berezovsky, the former Russian oligarch who became a rival to Mr. Putin, and whom Russia accused of defrauding the state of about $18 million in 1994 and 1995. He has been living in political asylum in Britain since 2003.

Mr. Kovtun, Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Sokolenko have all publicly denied any involvement in Mr. Litvinenkos case, but their shared background in the Soviet and then Russian secret services and the private security industry that evolved since has — fairly or not — heightened suspicions of Russias, and Mr. Putins, possible involvement.

Igor A. Goloshchapov, a former K.G.B. counterintelligence officer who now heads the League of Security Structures, a lobby for the private security firms that have proliferated here in Russia, said there were 4,200 licensed private security agencies in Moscow alone, as well as others operating less openly and available for hire for illicit purposes. The security and detective business is a regular part of life in any society, he said in a telephone interview. The peculiarity of Russias security business is that in our country our whole way of life was changing.

Where this kind of business starts, he added, the truth ends.

Steven Lee Myers reported from Moscow, and Mark Landler from Frankfurt. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

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